The Outer Limits of Gang Injunctions
2006; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0042-2533
Autores Tópico(s)Legal Systems and Judicial Processes
ResumoI. INTRODUCTION Almost a decade ago, the California Supreme Court endorsed the use of public nuisance injunctions as a means to control street gangs.1 Public nuisance injunctions against gangs (gang injunctions), which result from civil suits filed by district or city attorneys, prohibit the nuisance conduct within a prescribed geographical area, focusing on the turf claimed by the gang.2 In People ex rel. Gallo v. Acuna, the California Supreme Court upheld injunction against thirty-eight named members of a San Jose gang in a four square block area where none of the gang members lived.3 The court described the neighborhood as an occupied territory and its residents as prisoners in their own homes.4 To resolve the public nuisance posed by the gang, the Acuna injunction contained a controversial provision prohibiting gang members from publicly associating with each other. The California Supreme Court declared the provision constitutional; such provisions are now common in gang injunctions.5 Gang injunctions today also frequently limit otherwise legal behavior beyond public association, such as being out after dark, possession of various objects, making gang-related hand signals, and wearing gang colors.6 Many of the substantive constitutional rights issues raised by Acuna have been critiqued by commentators,7 but numerous gang injunctions have been imposed since Acuna was decided.8 Two distinct developments in gang injunction usage warrant deeper examination than existing scholarship provides. The geographical areas covered by gang injunctions have expanded since the four square block injunction upheld in Acuna.9 In a 1998 case, In re Englebrecht,10 a California appellate court upheld injunction covering approximately one square mile that included some gang members' residences.11 In 2005, Judge Frederick Bysshe of the Ventura County Superior Court entered injunction in the city of Oxnard, California against the Colonia Chiques gang. The Colonia Chiques injunction covers 6.6 square miles, which constitutes 24% of the city.12 This injunction's geographic scope significantly limits the liberties of gang members because they must travel farther to escape the injunction's strictures. The growth of areas being enjoined raises questions of proof: what must the government establish in order to secure injunction, and how should the boundaries of enjoined area be determined? It also raises questions about the interplay between constitutional protections and traditional equitable limits on courts' injunctive powers: how do these constrain the scope of gang injunctions? This Note will first address these questions regarding the expansion of areas being enjoined. The Colonia Chiques injunction deviated in another way from prior injunctions upheld in California courts: it was issued against the Colonia Chiques as unincorporated association, rather than naming individual gang members as defendants.13 Following Judge Bysshe's lead in the Colonia Chiques case, Judge James Iwasko entered injunction against the Southside and Westside gangs in Lompoc, California as unincorporated associations, without naming individual defendants.14 In 2006, Judge Vincent O'Neill issued a preliminary injunction against the Southside Chiques gang, Oxnard rival to the Colonia Chiques, without naming individual defendants.15 Refusing to name individual defendants is the second new development that this Note will address. Because unnamed defendants receive no notice that the injunctions are being considered, procedural due process concerns become severe when individual defendants are not named. Moreover, gangs themselves are not structured such that a leader speaks for the group and could respond in court.16 This Note argues that even if past gang injunctions upheld by California courts did not violate gang members' constitutional rights, these two new trends in the use of public nuisance injunctions as a means of gang control are equitably and constitutionally problematic. …
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